Methodological guide for the economic evaluation of medical technologies in France updated

In July 2020, the French National Authority for Health (HAS) issued an update of the methodological guide for the economic evaluation of medical technologies. The main changes aimed to improve the interpretation of the results and the uncertainty, to clarify technical points, and to integrate methodological changes that have occurred since 2011.

The updated version of the guide includes 27 recommendations compared to 20 in 2011 and the addition of a glossary. Two chapters have been added:

• A chapter on the objectives of economic evaluation, in order to encourage the evaluator to reflect on the meaning of his approach;
• A chapter on the evaluation of relative (or comparative) efficacy.

In the new guide, the new recommendations related to the efficiency criterion (in particular concerning the selection of comparators) and new modeling principles are described; the technical datasheets for the cost assessment are updated; the perspectives are clarified;  the recommendation over the time horizon is modified, etc.

Some methods were updated to be up to date with scientific knowledge:

• Current discount rate (The General Commission for Strategy and Foresight, 2013);
• The recommended method for estimating utility scores (Andrade, Ludwig, & Goni, 2020);
• The efficiency estimation by adopting the Net Profit criterion as an alternative to the cost-result differential ratio criterion.

See the full document in French here.

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